Young Woman with Unicorn

Young Woman with Unicorn shows a young woman holding a small unicorn in her lap, a symbol of chastity in Renaissance iconography. Painted around 1505-1506 during Raphael's Florentine period, the composition was directly inspired by Leonardo's Mona Lisa, adopting its half-length format with hands resting on a parapet and a loggia opening onto a landscape behind. The painting was heavily overpainted in the seventeenth century to transform it into a Saint Catherine, but restoration revealed the original unicorn and secular portrait beneath. It hangs in the Galleria Borghese in Rome.

The composition borrows Leonardo's Mona Lisa format — the seated half-length figure, the parapet, the flanking columns — but translates it into Raphael's own idiom of crystalline clarity and idealized beauty. The colors are brighter and more saturated than Leonardo's sfumato palette, with the woman's red sleeves and blue dress creating bold chromatic accords. The unicorn is rendered with delicate naturalism despite its mythological nature.